17 October 2011

More wonders from London

It feels like it was six months ago already, but three weeks ago I was walking around at 100% Design with my friends Bob Borson and Veronika Miller. 100% Design was one of the featured events of London Design Festival and I was there thanks to the sponsors of Blog Tour 2011. 100% Design takes place at the large but manageable Earl's Court Convention Centre in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London.


I saw all kinds of cool stuff at 100% Design and it was the perfect mix of furniture, fabrics, lighting, surfaces and appliances. However, what stopped me in my tracks was this:


That's a concrete induction cooktop and it's part of a concrete kitchen from Vienna-based Steininger. Here are their photos of their Betonküche, German for concrete kitchen.




Much like the Pryolave integrated induction cooktop I wrote about earlier, this concrete induction cooker throws out all preconceptions when it comes to cooking appliances. Who says appliances need to look the way everyone expects them to and who says they need to be made from the usual materials?

Add to that that this entire kitchen (except for the wooden counter) is covered in 8mm concrete veneers and I was in love. The Betonküche was designed by Martin Steininger whom I met. Thanks to Veronika and her language skills, Martin described his creation with the pride of someone who's made something game changing. My German consists of little more than "Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch [I speak a little German]" and had Veronika not been there I'd never have been able to tell the man how amazed I was by his creation.

If you want to look at some cutting edge Austrian design, look over Steininger's website.

5 comments:

  1. This is ultra-fantastic... Should we do an over/under on how long(if ever) it takes to get to the US?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wouldn't hold my breath about this one crossing the Atlantic any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, that induction cooktop is so cool. So sleek :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'll never forget it, that's for certain!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Looking forward to a little other-side-of-the-Atlantic-action in 6 days! I can't wait. Would have loved to have been in London for the show. Thanks, as always, for reporting.:)

    ReplyDelete

Talk to me!